| Welcome to Logical Politics. We hope you enjoy your visit. You're currently viewing our forum as a guest. This means you are limited to certain areas of the board and there are some features you can't use. If you join our community, you'll be able to access member-only sections, and use many member-only features such as customizing your profile, sending personal messages, and voting in polls. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free. Join our community! If you're already a member please log in to your account to access all of our features: |
| National Language; should we have one? | |
|---|---|
| Topic Started: Apr 28 2006, 01:34 PM (238 Views) | |
| Derek | Apr 28 2006, 01:34 PM Post #1 |
|
Contributor
  ![]](http://z6.ifrm.com/static/1/pip_r.png)
|
Heard about President Bush saying that the national anthem ought to be sung in English, and it struck me as odd; last I checked, we had no official national language, so it's not like singing it in English makes it any more patriotic. This, of course, reminded me of the debate about whether or not we should have a national language. So, as usual, there are reasons for and against. The primary advantage is that it cements a common language for communicating; if you know the national language, that should be the only language you need to know for whatever you need to do in that country. The primary reason against it is that it seems unnecessarily restrctive for the government to tell you what language to speak; while it can be inconvenient if you can't communicate easily, it might not be worth forcing people to learn any one language. While I normally defend freedom from unncessary restriction wholeheartedly, I'm not so sure about this one. If you can't speak any english, it makes government-citizen interaction difficult and can even hamper the government's ability to do its job. It's possible to acquire enough translators, or hire people who can speak multiple languages as well, but this can be expensive; is the greater government size and cost worth the freedom to not understand english? Is it also the government's responsibility to provide translators at public schools? |
| |
 |
 
|
| 9th Engineer | May 1 2006, 12:13 PM Post #2 |
|
Contributor
|
I absolutly think we need a national language. It's bizzar that we haven't already set it to English, but if it's causing this much trouble now's the time to do it. Regardless of what secondary languages our citizens speak we need a common lanuage in which all of us can communicate. |
| Bend the laws of nature untill they scream. Bend the laws of physics untill they shatter. - Engineers' creed | |
|
|
|
| « Previous Topic · Political Debates · Next Topic » |
7:54 AM May 25